“None of us are truly successful.”

Like many young Americans, Ashley Terrell says her parents always expected her to go to college and pursue a career of her choice.

More than a year after graduating, Terrell, 23, says she still struggles to find a full-time job that matches her skill set.

“I’m still looking for a job,” Terrell told CNBC Make It in mid-November. “It’s something I have to wake up every day and motivate myself to take action.”

Terrell graduated from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, hoping to work for a startup company in content strategy and marketing.

Despite spending months networking and filling out job applications during her senior year, Terrell says the only offer she received was to promote power tool products at a local hardware store for $25 an hour.

She says she started looking for a new job within a few weeks because she felt a retail-focused job didn’t match her experience or career goals. As a result, he accepted a new position with reduced benefits at a local Marriott hotel, but was laid off in September 2025.

It’s no secret that the job market is tough right now. Hiring has been down for much of this year, with many people clinging to jobs, and there are signs that layoffs will increase.

As for the youngest workers, more than 2 million earned a bachelor’s degree in spring 2025. A survey conducted in June and July by education technology company Cengage Group found that only 30% of graduates reported finding full-time work in their field.

Many Gen Zers are now competing in an increasingly tight job market and are wondering whether a college degree is still the key to landing a secure job.

About 76% of employers reported hiring the same or fewer entry-level employees in 2025 than in 2024, according to a Cengage report. Their reason for less robust hiring was due to broader economic pressures such as a tight labor market, the rise of AI, inflation and new tariff policies.

Nick Tremper, senior economist at payroll and HR services company Gusto, said the main reason for the economic slowdown was that companies overhired in the post-pandemic economy in 2021 and 2022 and offered high salaries to compete for talent.

Many of these hires haven’t moved on from their positions, and companies are now slow to hire new employees or fill roles, he said.

Meanwhile, layoffs are at their highest level since the pandemic, with 1.1 million job cuts announced between January and October 2025, according to data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

As a result, “people just kind of sit there,” Tremper said. “They’re not looking for a new role, they’re not leaving their current role. Without a new job, it’s difficult for entry-level employees to get their foot in the door and start their career.”

The unemployment rate for recent college graduates has been rising since 2022, reaching 9.7% as of September 2025, the same rate as for 20- to 24-year-olds with only a high school diploma, according to Federal Reserve data. Unemployment rates for new college graduates tend to be lower than for high school graduates, but these two rates have converged in recent years.

Tremper says unemployment early in a career can have mixed effects on workers. Young professionals “move around frequently to improve their earning potential and increase their current and lifetime wages,” he says. “The frozen labor market, especially for people in their 20s, means that’s not happening for them.”

Tremper said AI is another reason why companies are pulling back on adoption.

He said technology isn’t necessarily replacing human workers all together, but it is allowing companies to hire more slowly when considering the best place to add new employees. “Companies will be able to use AI to fill in the gaps when considering their overall hiring strategy and what that will look like moving forward.”

Some young job seekers, including Terrell, say they feel AI poses a major challenge in finding work.

“In recent months, especially since this summer, I’ve noticed fewer job openings for which I’m qualified simply because I feel like AI is taking some of the jobs,” Terrell said.

She added that many of her friends have given up on finding jobs that allow them to utilize the expertise of their university degrees.

“Some of them have kind of settled into the underemployment route and gotten those jobs, and some of them have gone to vocational school,” she says.

One such person who entered the trading industry after graduating from college is 25-year-old Chris Henderson. He graduated from Rowan University in New Jersey in 2022 with a degree in business administration.

He had planned to work in corporate finance after graduating from university, but says he couldn’t find a job in his desired salary range. After three months of job hunting, he decided to work in his family’s electrical engineering business.

While looking for a job after graduation, Henderson remembers her father telling her there were always jobs in the electrical field and that if the white-collar job market wasn’t stable, “you could always rely on them.”

Ms. Henderson completed two years of trade school and currently earns approximately $72,000 a year. He plans to use his business degree to one day run his family’s business or start his own contracting company.

He hopes the development of electric vehicles will allow him to have more stable work as his career progresses.

“I actually find being an electrician really rewarding and rewarding because there is nothing better than working with your hands and completing a job you did yourself.”

Jobs for electricians are expected to be among the top 20 fastest-growing jobs over the next decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, along with job openings for construction workers, nurses and registered nurses, software developers and home health aides.

Despite not utilizing his bachelor’s degree in his current career, Henderson doesn’t regret going to college.

“There are aspects of college that teach you things you can’t learn anywhere else, like time management,” he says. “I think university was a great path for me to discover my true passion.”

Although she’s still looking for work, Terrell agrees.

“The biggest takeaway for me was being able to grow up a little more independent and learn life skills away from my parents,” she says.

She still hopes to get a job related to her degree and finds that referrals from her network make the biggest difference when it comes to getting interviews. But the search could be difficult, she said, because many of her classmates are also stuck.

“Things are changing really quickly, and it’s not just one industry, it’s like every industry,” she says. “Half of my classmates that I went to college with didn’t have jobs when they got on stage with me. So I feel like we’re all in the same boat. How can we help each other when none of us are really successful?”

“The flat employment of today’s young workers could become a growing concern over the next 10 to 20 years, as young workers seek to acquire skills that can support their long-term career advancement, overall wage increases, and their own advancement potential,” Tremper said.

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